Or to put it another way, if you had to watch your manager placing the pitcher as the 8th place hitter in the lineup, day after day, you’d try some serious drugs, too.

Y’see folks, there is flipside to the tale that warmed Will Leitch’s heart. While Rick Ankiel has achieved his long-awaited big league callup as a position player (perhaps payback for La Genius leaving him out there to die against the Mets in 2000), the Cards’ Scott Spiezio — mysteriously unavailable earlier in the week — has voluntarily entered a treatment program to deal with an unspecified problem.

Though I’d have personally recommended the Gillette Institute, I’m sure all of CSTB’s readers will join me in wishing Spiezio the speediest of recoveries.